In this paper, I explore a hitherto largely neglected area of business history: the
corporate treasury. Most business or corporate historians consider the corporate
treasury function a specialized aspect of the finance function and give it little
explicit attention. I argue that this neglect is undeserved, and consider how and
why treasury has evolved as a discipline distinct from other aspects of the finance
function. We can attribute the rise of the professional corporate treasurer to a
number of factors: changes in the organization and financing of companies, including
change and innovation in financial markets; the wider professionalization of management;
and the internationalization of business. These factors affected different countries
at different times. In Europe, economic and financial uncertainties in the 1970s
acted as a major stimulus, whereas treasury, in common with other aspects of the
"managerial revolution," developed earlier in the United States.

This paper surveys the small, yet growing, literature that employs game theory for
economic history analysis. It elaborates on the promise and challenge of integrating
game theoretical and economic history analyses and presents the approaches taken
in conducting such an integration. Most of the essay, however, is devoted to presenting
studies in economic history that utilize game theory as their main analytical framework.
Studies are presented based on their substance to highlight the range of potential
topics in economic history that can be and had been enriched through a game theoretical
analysis.

This paper builds on the recent efforts of a number of scholars to reintroduce entrepreneurship
into the research agenda of business historians. We consider the role of entrepreneurship
in the history of multinational business and globalization. The paper examines the
value and limitations of adapting recent social scientific theories and methods on
entrepreneurship to research on international business history. Specifically, we
focus on three recent areas of social scientific work on entrepreneurship and weigh
their value to business history research. First, we consider research on entrepreneurial
cognition and the extent to which it can be employed to understand the historical
ownership advantages of multinational firms. Second, we draw on concepts from entrepreneurial
strategy and finance and examine the extent to which they can be used to understand
the history of how firms allocated resources to uncertain international ventures.
Finally, we focus on the question of the diffusion of the benefits of globalization
and their impact on entrepreneurship within host economies. We conclude that the
cautious adoption of some of these recent conceptual developments offers fertile
opportunities for further research in international business history.

Since the Middle Ages the Jews have been engaged primarily in urban, skilled occupations,
such as crafts, trade, finance, and medicine. This distinctive occupational selection
occurred between the seventh and the ninth centuries in the Muslim Empire and then
it spread to other locations. We argue that this transition was the outcome of the
widespread literacy among Jews prompted by an educational reform in the first century
CE. Based on the growing nexus between education and Judaism in the first half of
the millennium, we build a model in which Jewish men choose education, occupation,
religion, and location. The model predicts that when urbanization expands (as it
did in the Muslim Empire), Jews move to new cities due to their comparative advantage
in urban, skilled occupations. Furthermore, before urbanization a proportion of Jewish
farmers are predicted to convert to other religions. The predictions of the model
regarding conversions, migrations, and reduction in the size of the Jewish population
are consistent with the historical evidence about the first millennium provided by
the historians. Hence, our study presents evidence for the long-term economic implications
of changes in social norms.

Recent research in international economic history has opened up new lines of enquiry
on the origins of globalization, as well as its causes and consequences. Such findings
have the potential to inform contemporary debates and this paper considers what lessons
this body of historical work has for our current understanding of the linkages between
trade and development.

This paper is a draft of the introduction to the chapter on voluntary, nonprofit,
and religious entities and activities slated to appear in the Millennial
Edition of Historical Statistics of the United States. Conceding the various
problematic definitions of the "nonprofit
sector," the essay offers a rationale for the broadly inclusive approach to the selection
of historical statistics of institutions and activities presented in the chapter.
In addition, it reviews the challenges and opportunities for researchers working
on the statistical aspects of nonprofit, voluntary, and religious organizations.
The essay includes samples of the statistical series that will appear in HSUS.

It is argued that government credibility is an important resource and that it can
be improved by delegating decision-making competence beyond the nation-state. It
is hypothesized that such delegation should result in higher income and growth. Some
former British colonies retained the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as their
final court of appeals even after independence. This court is thus taken as a natural
experiment to test our hypothesis. It turns out that retaining the jurisdiction is
indeed significant for explaining economic growth.

The demographic history of the Jews in the Middle Ages may be characterized by two
main phenomena: i) a sharp drop in the number of Jews until the beginning of the
modern period, due mainly to conversions; and, ii) early urbanization. Until now,
these features have been analyzed as primarily resulting from persecution and restrictions
initiated by the political and religious authorities in the host countries. Economic
historians have recently proposed an explanation based on mandatory education in
the Jewish tradition (Botticini and Eckstein, 2001). We propose a supplementary explanation
based on the incentives to switch affiliation and/or location in a dual environment,
where potential gains from in-group cooperation for the Jewish minority may well
be offset by losses due to intergroup hostility. Our model generates the two results
described above (i.e., a decrease in the total number of Jews, and their concentration
in urban areas), without having to rely either on discrimination policies or on investment
in human capital, as in previous research.

This paper documents the major features of Jewish economic history in the first millennium
to explain the distinctive occupational selection of the Jewish people into urban,
skilled occupations. We show that many Jews entered urban occupations in the eighth-ninth
centuries in the Muslim Empire when there were no restrictions on their economic
activities, most of them were farmers, and they were a minority in all locations.
Therefore, arguments based on restrictions or minority status cannot explain the
occupational transition of the Jews at that time. Our thesis is that the occupational
selection of the Jews was the outcome of the widespread literacy prompted by a religious
and educational reform in the first century ce, which was implemented in the third
to the eighth century. We present detailed information on the implementation of this
religious and educational reform in Judaism based on the Talmud, archeological evidence
on synagogues, the Cairo Geniza documents, and the Responsa literature. We also provide
evidence of the economic returns to Jewish religious literacy.

Following the discovery of gold in the Australian colonies in the 1850s, commercial
adventurers from around the world made their way to the antipodes. Among these were
a number of young American entrepreneurs. This paper examines the American entrepreneurs
who made their mark in the Australian colonies in the latter half of the nineteenth
century, and considers how individuals achieved success within intersecting communities.
Individual entrepreneurs found support in communities based on family connections,
associations through friendship and experience, and shared nationality. They also
found support through informational networks created in the commercial world, including
consular reports, trade magazines, and International Exhibitions. Primary sources
of the era, including family letters, newspaper and magazine accounts, and consular
records, reveal the complex communities within which entrepreneurs in Australia operated
to achieve their commercial goals.

This paper attempts to situate Lee Iacocca's role in the Chrysler bailout within
a broader automotive entrepreneurial community, and to understand how his actions
in helping Chrysler stave off bankruptcy in the 1979-1981 period helped to reshape
not only the automotive industry, but business-government relations, and the very
nature of "brink management" in a post-industrial America. In short, the paper attempts
to answer the question of whether Iacocca fundamentally changed how automotive management
operated in Detroit, or whether his actions in saving Chrysler remain an isolated,
unique case within auto business history. It argues that one cannot understand Iacocca
without understanding the changing pre-1980 milieu and its impact on the wider automotive
industry and economy of the post-1980, post-Chrysler bailout period. Iacocca and
the Chrysler situation were unique, yet they remain essential to understanding the
direction of the US auto industry, and the end of American industrial hegemony more
broadly.